OpenOffice.org vs. Microsoft Office

" Nobody disputes that Microsoft Office is king of the hill in office suites, but if you put marketing and market share aside, how does OpenOffice.org compare?

"How does OpenOffice.org (OOo) compare with Microsoft Office (MSO)? The question is harder to answer than you might expect. Few users have the experience or patience to do a thorough comparison. Too often, they miss features that have different names or are in different positions in the editing window. Or, perhaps they overlook the fact that some features, although missing in one, easily can be added through customization. Yet another problem when comparing something to MSO is which of the eight current versions of MSO do you use for the comparison?

"To cut through these difficulties, as I compared OpenOffice.org 3.1.1 and Microsoft Office 2007, I assumed until a search proved otherwise that, if one office suite included a feature, the other also would have it. I also focused on the three core applications: the word processors, spreadsheets and presentation programs. The results suggest a close feature match for average users, but in some cases, a clear choice for expert users."

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